Bats Are Working, but Angels Still Lose : Baseball: They are beaten by Orioles, 8-4, for 13th loss in 17 games. McCaskill falls to 7-13.

Last week, the Angels said they merely needed to get some hits to reverse course and barge back into the AL West race.

After pounding the Cleveland Indians and Baltimore Orioles for 51 hits in five games--and winning only once--the Angels are wondering what else they need to staunch the stream of losses that has carried them within two games of last place.

“We need a lot of things (to) go good for us,” catcher Lance Parrish said with a weary smile. “Nothing has seemed to go well for us for quite a while.”

The Angels’ 8-4 loss to the Orioles Thursday night in their final visit to Memorial Stadium was a painful illustration of much that has gone wrong in recent weeks.

Starter Kirk McCaskill (7-13) gave up four runs in six innings. He left trailing, 4-3, but Baltimore scored three times in the seventh inning off Scott Bailes and rookie Chris Beasley to build an unassailable lead.

The Angels stirred momentarily in the ninth inning, when Dave Gallagher homered with one out and pinch-hitter Donnie Hill singled, but Mark Williamson closed out the Orioles’ second victory in three games and their first series victory since they took two of three games from the Red Sox June 28-30.

Since the Angels occupied the AL West lead July 3, they have lost 13 of 17 games. They fell seven games behind the Minnesota Twins on Thursday, matching their biggest deficit of the season.

“It’s hard to believe, but every time we get good pitching, we can’t score runs. Or if we get runs, they score more runs,” said Parrish, whose run-scoring single in the fourth inning brought the Angels even, 3-3, and chased starter Roy Smith. “We’re getting hits now, but we’re not scoring runs with those hits like we should. We get a couple or three hits in a row, and then we get shut down. You can’t expect the pitching staff to keep everybody to one or two runs.

“We’ve had games where we came out and hit the ball well and scored enough runs to indicate we were going to snap out of it, but we fall right back where we were. . . . It’s getting late. This is the kind of ballclub you would expect would have gotten ourselves on track right now.”

McCaskill has been on a losing track, dropping his last five decisions and eight of nine. His 13th loss was a career high and made him the major leagues’ loss leader.

“It’s very frustrating,” said McCaskill, who gave up a home run to Chris Hoiles in the Orioles’ three-run third inning and a 412-foot homer to Mike Devereaux in the fifth that put them ahead for good.

“Personally, I’ve never had a season like this. I imagine every big league pitcher goes through a season like this. I don’t know. I know it’s no fun.”

It was no fun for Angel Manager Doug Rader to see Luis Polonia strike out on an off-speed pitch from Mike Flanagan with a runner on second base in the seventh inning and the Angels behind, 4-3. It was less fun for him to see .130 hitter Juan Bell lead off the seventh with a single off Bailes and score after Cal Ripken walked and pinch-hitter Dwight Evans lined a double over Gary Gaetti’s glove. Bell’s one-out single in the eighth inning off Jeff Robinson also hurt, because Hoiles raced to third and scored Baltimore’s final run on Devereaux’s sacrifice fly.

“Bell gets a base hit. That’s the most important out of the inning,” Rader said. “There are so many subtle things that you take for granted when things are going well, and when things are going poorly, it’s easy to see why you need to do those things. . . .

“We got a bunch of hits and hit a couple of balls over the wall, but still, we’re failing to put together the big inning offensively, and we’re giving that type of inning up. There were a lot of signs of good things, but for the last couple of weeks, they haven’t been matching, and that’s reflected in how many games we’ve won.”

Dave Parker, whose second-inning homer gave the Angels their first run--and gave him homers in back-to-back games for the first time this season--agreed.

“The timely hit is escaping us,” he said. “You usually need good pitching and timely hitting to win, and we haven’t been able to combine those ingredients. . . . Right now, everything’s a struggle. With 11 hits we should score more than four runs. We’ve got to find what we need to make this team a fine machine, and right now, we’re struggling.”